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• BI&EPM in Focus - November 2011

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Enterprise Performance Management A Thing of Beauty, by Alison WeissAvon’s enterprise performance management system delivers accurate information and critical insight to managers at every level of the organization Oracle Crystal Ball Helps Managers Guard Against Volatility, by Alison Weiss The Insight Game, by Aaron LazenbyEnterprise performance management can deliver insights crucial to navigating the volatility of the global economy—and that’s no game of checkers. KPI vs. the Bottom Line, by Edward RoskeFor managers, is tracking the key metrics for their departments enough to ensure success for the entire business? The CEO for Oracle partner interRel shares his opinion. Deep Integration, by Aaron LazenbyThe synthesis of Oracle Hyperion applications and core Oracle technologies can deliver deep benefits to analytics-driven businesses. Oracle Crystal Ball. Oracle's #1 Solution for Risk Management Follow EPM Documentation at Hyperion EPM Info for news about EPM documentation releases and updates (twitter | facebook | Linkedin) Whitepaper: Integrating XBRL Into Your Financial Reporting Process Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management Customer Story: StealthGas Inc. Saves 12 Accountant Days Yearly, Validates XBRL-Compliant Financial Filing Data in One Day Sherwin-Williams Argentina I.C.S.A. Accelerates Budget Preparation Process by 75% BBDO Germany GmbH Consolidates Financial and Planning Processes for More Than 50 Agencies StealthGas Inc. Saves 12 Accountant Days Yearly, Validates XBRL-Compliant Financial Filing Data in One Day Business Intelligence Webcast Replay: Oracle Data Mining & BI EE - Predictive Analytics (Part 2) Innovation Award Winners - BI/EPM: HealthSouth, State of MD, Clorox Company, Telenor and Dunkin Brands Leeds Teaching Hospitals National Health Service Trust Builds Budget Reports Six Times Faster, Achieves 100% ROI in 12 Months with Oracle Business Intelligence Home Credit Group Consolidates Reporting and Saves Time across All Business Units w/ Oracle Essbase & OBIEE Autoglass Improves Business Visibility and Services to Customers and Partners with Oracle Business Intelligence Events Download Oracle OpenWorld Oct 2011 Presentations select Middleware - BI or Applications - Hyperion Oracle Business Analytics Summits:learn about the latest trends, best practices, and innovations in business intelligence, analytics applications, and data warehousing Webcast Nov 15 9am PST: Running the Last Mile, Beyond Financial Consolidations - Streamlining the Close and Addressing the SEC's XBRL Mandate Webcast Dec 13 1pm PST: Defining Your Mobile BI Strategy (BICG) New Training Available: Oracle BI Publisher 11g R1: Fundamentals Webcast Replay: How to Expand the Usage of Analytics in your Organization while Driving Down IT Spend Webcast Replay: Real-Time Decisions (RTD) Updated Use Cases for Ecommerce Personalization in Financial Services & Retail

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• SQLAuthority News – Download Whitepaper – Power View Infrastructure Configuration and Installation: Step-by-Step and Scripts

  - by pinaldave

  Power View, a feature of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition, is an interactive data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience. It provides intuitive ad-hoc reporting for business users such as data analysts, business decision makers, and information workers. Microsoft has recently released very interesting whitepaper which covers a sample scenario that validates the connectivity of the Power View reports to both PowerPivot workbooks and tabular models. This white paper talks about following important concepts about Power View: Understanding the hardware and software requirements and their download locations Installing and configuring the required infrastructure when Power View and its data models are on the same computer and on different computer Installing and configuring a computer used for client access to Power View reports, models, Sharepoint 2012 and Power View in a workgroup Configuring single sign-on access for double-hop scenarios with and without Kerberos You can download the whitepaper from here. This whitepaper talks about many interesting scenarios. It would be really interesting to know if you are using Power View in your production environment. If yes, would you please share your experience over here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

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• What data to send when tracking clicks with Google Analytics events (and how)?

  - by user359650

  When tracking clicks on links, there are 3 items I'm interested in: link location in the page by grabbing the id of the closest parent: to see influence of location on click-through link text: to see influence of text on click-through link href attribute value: to see where people go when leaving my website The problem when using Google Analytics to track those clicks is that events only have 3 available text fields, one of which being the category, which if you use to store one of the above items will create a mess in your Event reporting because you will have as many categories as item values. Therefore if you assign a predefined value to the category (e.g. clicks), then you're left with only 2 event fields (action, label) to store 3 items (location, text, href). That in itself isn't the end of the world because you can concatenate 2 items into 1 event field, then use the reporting or the API to filter things out. Accordingly what I plan on doing is this: category: clicks action: {location_on_page} ¦ {text} label: {href} where {__} are variable values related to the clicked links With this I can easily create some reports directly via the GUI: downloads: include only events where label ends with .pdf click outs to particular domains: include only events where label contains domain And for more complex tasks I need to export the data (or use the API): influence of location on clicks: for each location in the design, count number of events that have that location in the action, then corroborate with pageviews of the corresponding pages. Whilst this looks good I'm wondering if there is a better approach, hence the following questions: Q1: Can you foresee any particular issues with this particular setup (e.g. things I won't be able to report on)? Q2: Can you think of other data that would be interesting to include in the event?

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• Creating Parent-Child Relationships in SSRS

  - by Tim Murphy

  As I have been working on SQL Server Reporting Services reports the last couple of weeks I ran into a scenario where I needed to present a parent-child data layout.  It is rare that I have seen a report that was a simple tabular or matrix format and this report continued that trend.  I found that the processes for developing complex SSRS reports aren’t as commonly described as I would have thought.  Below I will layout the process that I went through to create a solution. I started with a List control which will contain the layout of the master (parent) information.  This allows for a main repeating report part.  The dataset for this report should include the data elements needed to be passed to the subreport as parameters.  As you can see the layout is simply text boxes that are bound to the dataset. The next step is to set a row group on the List row.  When the dialog appears select the field that you wish to group your report by.  A good example in this case would be the employee name or ID. Create a second report which becomes the subreport.  The example below has a matrix control.  Create the report as you would any parameter driven document by parameterizing the dataset. Add the subreport to the main report inside the row of the List control.  This can be accomplished by either dragging the report from the solution explorer or inserting a Subreport control and then setting the report name property. The last step is to set the parameters on the subreport.  In this case the subreport has EmpId and ReportYear as parameters.  While some of the documentation on this states that the dialog will automatically detect the child parameters, but this has not been my experience.  You must make sure that the names match exactly.  Tie the name of the parameter to either a field in the dataset or a parameter of the parent report. del.icio.us Tags: SQL Server Reporting Services,SSRS,SQL Server,Subreports

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• Today's Links (6/24/2011)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Fusion Applications - How we look at the near future | Domien Bolmers Bolmers recaps a Logica pow-wow around Fusion Applications. Who invented e-mail? | Nicholas Carr IT apparently does matter to Nicholas Carr as he shares links to Errol Morris's 5-part NYT series about the origins of email. David Sprott's Blog: Service Oriented Cloud (SOC) "Whilst all the really good Cloud environments are Service Oriented," says Sprott, "it’s very much the minority of consumer SaaS that is today." Fast, Faster, JRockit | René van Wijk Oracle ACE René van Wijk tells you "everything you ever wanted to know about the JRockit JVM, well quite a lot anyway." Creating an XML document based on my POJO domain model – how will JAXB help me? | Lucas Jellema "I thought that adding a few JAXB annotations to my existing POJO model would do the trick," says Jellema, "but no such luck." Announcing Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting | Theresa Hickman Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting is designed to help companies track and report greenhouse emissions. Yoga framework for REST-like partial resource access | William Vambenepe Vambenepe says: "A tweet by Stefan Tilkov brought Yoga to my attention, 'a framework for supporting REST-like URI requests with field selectors.'" InfoQ: Pragmatic Software Architecture and the Role of the Architect "Joe Wirtley introduces software architecture and the role of the architect in software development along with techniques, tips and resources to help one get started thinking as an architect."

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• How to manage long running background threads and report progress with DDD

  - by Mr Happy

  Title says most of it. I have found surprising little information about this. I have a long running operation of which the user wants to see the progress (as in, item x of y processed). I also need to be able to pause and stop the operation. (Stopping doesn't rollback the items already processed.) The thing is, it's not that each item takes a long time to get processed, it's that that there are usually a lot of items. And what I've read about so far is that it's somewhat of an anti-pattern to put something like a queue in the DB. I currently don't have any messaging system in place, and I've never worked with one either. Another thing I read somewhere is that progress reporting is something that belongs in the application layer, but it didn't go into the details. So having said all this, what I have in mind is the following. User request with list of items enters the application layer. Application layer gets some information from the domain needed to process the items. Application layer passes the items and the information off to some domain service (should the implementation of this service belong in the infrastructure layer?) This service spins up a worker thread with callbacks for both progress reporting and pausing/stopping it. This worker thread will process each item in it's own UoW. This means the domain information from earlier needs to be stored in some DTO. Since nothing is really persisted, the service should be singleton and thread safe Whenever a user requests a progress report or wants to pause/stop the operation, the application layer will ask the service. Would this be a correct solution? Or am I at least on the right track with this? Especially the singleton and thread safe part makes the whole thing feel icky.

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• Data that has been deleted in P6, how is it updated in Analytics

  - by Jeffrey McDaniel

  In P6 Reporting Database 2.0 the ETL process looked to the refrdel table in the P6 PMDB to determine which projects were deleted. The refrdel table could not be cleared out between ETL runs or those deletes would be lost. After the ETL process is run the refrdel can be cleared out. It is important to keep any purging of the refrdel in a consistent cycle so the ETL process can pick up these deletes and process them accordingly.  In P6 Reporting Database 2.2 and higher the Extended Schema is used as the data source. In the Extended Schema, deleted data is filtered out by the views. The Extended Schema services will handle any interaction with the refrdel table, this concern with timing refrdel cleanup and ETL runs is not applicable as of this release. In the Extended Schema tables (ex. TaskX) there can still be deleted data present. The Extended Schema views join on the primary PMDB tables (ex. Task) and filter out any deleted data.  Any data that was deleted that remains in the Extended Schema tables can be cleaned out at a designated time by running the clean up procedure as documented in the P6 Extended Schema white paper. This can be run occasionally but is not necessary to run often unless large amounts of data has been deleted.

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• SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch Event - Montreal

  - by guybarrette

  If you’re into SQL Server, you may want to attend the free 2008 R2 launch event that will take place on May 26th, 2010 in Montreal. Agenda: 8:00 - 9:00am : Registration and Breakfast 9:00 – 9:15am:  Welcome and Introductions 9:15 – 10:00am:  Keynote Presentation 10:00 - 10:15am: Morning break 10:15 – 11:45am: SQL Server Presentation 11:45 – 12:45pm: Lunch 12:45 – 1:45pm: Track Session 1 1:45 – 2:45pm: Track Session 2 2:45 – 3:00pm: Afternoon break 3:00 - 4:00pm: Track Session 3 Track Descriptions DBA TRACK Session 1: Ensure Business Continuity with SQL Server 2008 R2,  Windows Server 2008 & Hyper-V Live Migration Session 2: Simplify management of your SQL Server data platform with Multi-server Management Session 3: Deliver unprecedented access to business-critical data at a lower TCO with SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse BI TRACK Session1: Enable Managed Self-service BI with Power Pivot for Excel and SharePoint 2010 Session 2: Achieve Rapid Reporting with Reporting Services and Report Builder 3.0 Session 3: Importance of Master Data Management Dev - Visual Studio TRACK Session 1: Developing SQL Applications with Visual Studio 2010 Session 2:Managing Change for SQL Server applications using Team Foundation Server  Session 3: Targeting SQL Azure using Visual Studio   Register here var addthis_pub="guybarrette";

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• Strategies for avoiding SQL in your Controllers... or how many methods should I have in my Models?

  - by Keith Palmer

  So a situation I run into reasonably often is one where my models start to either: Grow into monsters with tons and tons of methods OR Allow you to pass pieces of SQL to them, so that they are flexible enough to not require a million different methods For example, say we have a "widget" model. We start with some basic methods: get($id) insert($record) update($id, $record) delete($id) getList() // get a list of Widgets That's all fine and dandy, but then we need some reporting: listCreatedBetween($start_date, $end_date) listPurchasedBetween($start_date, $end_date) listOfPending() And then the reporting starts to get complex: listPendingCreatedBetween($start_date, $end_date) listForCustomer($customer_id) listPendingCreatedBetweenForCustomer($customer_id, $start_date, $end_date) You can see where this is growing... eventually we have so many specific query requirements that I either need to implement tons and tons of methods, or some sort of "query" object that I can pass to a single -query(query $query) method... ... or just bite the bullet, and start doing something like this: list = MyModel-query(" start_date X AND end_date < Y AND pending = 1 AND customer_id = Z ") There's a certain appeal to just having one method like that instead of 50 million other more specific methods... but it feels "wrong" sometimes to stuff a pile of what's basically SQL into the controller. Is there a "right" way to handle situations like this? Does it seem acceptable to be stuffing queries like that into a generic -query() method? Are there better strategies?

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• AR242x / AR542x wireless card not working

  - by Pipan87

  My wifi worked perfect until I updated to the latest version of Ubuntu. Now I don't find any wireless connections at all. I have tried lots of guides on the internet but I can't get it to work. I did however start to work once after writing something I don't remember in Terminal, but after rebooting it stopped working again. Some info (don't know if you need more to help): 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet (rev b0) Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 022c Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44 Memory at 55200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K] I/O ports at 3000 [size=128] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [58] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [180] Device Serial Number ff-93-2e-de-00-23-8b-ff Kernel driver in use: ATL1E Kernel modules: atl1e 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device e00d Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at 54100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Count=1 Masked- Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel Kernel driver in use: ath5k Kernel modules: ath5k

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• Name Changes for the Business Analytic My Oracle Support Communities

  - by THE

  (guest post by Mel) Please let us welcome the new names for the EPM communities!You will shortly be seeing the following names when looking at your communities:Business Intelligence            OBIEE            OBIAOracle Hyperion EPM            Hyperion FDM            Hyperion Enterprise & Hyperion Enterprise Reporting            Hyperion Essbase            HFM            Hyperion Other Products            Hyperion Planning            HPCM            Hyperion Reporting Products             Hyperion Shared Services            Hyperion Patch ReviewsWe would also like to take this opportunity to mention that externally kept bookmarks may not work after the change, as the name of the community is part of the URL.So in case you have bookmarked discussions whitepaper-lists etc in your browser, you may want to re-visit these after the name-change. We hope that you continue your contribution to your community.Thank you for your ongoing support.

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• Uralelektrostroy Improves Turnaround Times for Engineering and Construction Projects by Approximately 50% with Better Project Data Management

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  LLC Uralelektrostroy was established in 1998, to meet the growing demand for reliable energy supply, which included the deployment and operation of a modern power grid system for Russia’s booming economy and industrial sector. To rise to the challenge, the country required a company with a strong reputation and the ability to strategically operate energy production and distribution facilities. As a renowned energy expert, Uralelektrostroy successfully embarked on the mission—focusing on the design, construction, and operation of power grids, transmission lines, and generation facilities. Today, Uralelektrostroy leads the Russian utilities industry with operations across the country, particularly in the Ural, Western Siberia, and Moscow regions. Challenges: Track work progress through all engineering project development stages with ease—from planning and start-up operations, to onsite construction and quality assurance—to enhance visibility into complex projects, such as power grid and power-transmission-line construction Implement and execute engineering projects faster—for example, designing and building power generation and distribution facilities—by better monitoring numerous local subcontractors Improve alignment of project schedules with project owners’ requirements—awarding federal and regional authorities—to avoid incurring fines for missing deadlines Solutions: Used Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management 8.1 to streamline communication with customers and subcontractors through better data management and harmonized reporting, reducing construction project implementation and turnaround times by approximately 50%, on average Enabled fast generation of work-in-progress reports that track project schedules, budgets, materials, and staffing—from approval and material procurement, to construction and delivery Reduced the number of construction sites by nearly 30% (from 35 to 25) by identifying unprofitable sites—streamlining operations at the company’s construction site network and increasing profitability Improved project visibility by enabling managers to efficiently track project status, ensuring on-time reporting and punctual project deliveries to federal customers to reduce delay penalties to zero “Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management 8.1 drastically changed the way we run our business. We’ve reduced the number of redundant assets, streamlined project implementation and execution, and improved collaboration with our customers and contractors. Overall, the Oracle deployment helped to increase our profitability.” – Roman Aleksandrovich Naumenko, Head of Information Technology, LLC Uralelektrostroy Read the complete customer snapshot here.

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• Project Showcase: SaaS Web Apps Hits a Home Run with New SCMS Database

  - by Webgui

  We love seeing projects from start to finish, and we’re happy to share the latest example with you. Who: SaaS Web Apps – they use Software as a Service to create web applications that look and feel like desktop applications. What: SaaS Web Apps needed to build a Sports Contract Management System (SCMS) for one of its customers, Premier Stinson Sports. Why: The SCMS database is used for collecting, analyzing and recording college coach and athletic directors’ employment and contract data. The Challenge: Premier Stinson Sports works with a number of partners, each with its own needs and unique requirements. For example, USA Today uses the system to provide cutting edge news analysis while The National Sports Law Institute of Marquette University Law School uses it to for the latest sports contract data and student analysis. In addition, the system needed to be secure due to the sensitivity of the data; it was essential that the user security and permissions be easily configurable. As always, performance was a key factor, especially with the intense reporting and analytical capabilities for this project. Because of this, most of the processing had to be done on a dedicated server but the project called for the richness and responsiveness of a desktop application. The Solution: To execute the project, SaaS Web Apps used APS.Net-based Visual WebGui from Gizmox, combined with SQL Server 2008 and SQL Reporting Services. This combination resulted in a quick deployment for SaaS Web Apps’ customers. The Result: The completed project gave each partner the scalability and availability of a web application with the performance and security of a desktop application. As an example, USA Today pulls data from this database to give readers the latest sports stats – Salary analysis of 2010 Football Bowl Subdivision Coaches. And here’s a screenshot of the database itself. Great work, SaaS Web Apps!

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• Get paperclip to crop the image without validating

  - by Micke

  Hello fellow stackoverflow members. I have been following this guide to enable users to have their own avatar. But i have bumped in to a litle problem. When the user is cropping the image the model tries to validate all my validations. My user model looks like this: class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_attached_file :avatar, :styles => { :small => "100x100>", :large => "500x500>" }, :processors => [:cropper] attr_accessor :password, :crop_x, :crop_y, :crop_w, :crop_h attr_accessible :crop_x, :crop_y, :crop_w, :crop_h validates_confirmation_of :password validates_presence_of :password And when the user runs the crop updating script the user model tries to validate the password. But because i have no password field on the cropping page it can't validate it. Here is the updating of the crop: @user = User.find(current_user.id) if @user.update_attributes(params[:user]) flash[:notice] = "Successfully updated user." end How can i bypass this in a easy and clean way?

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• How can I save form input to a database, I'm having trouble sending the values to my controller.

  - by Sergio Tapia

  Here's my RegisterController: public function saveforminformationAction(){ $request = $this->getRequest(); if($request->isPost()){ //I NEED HELP WITH THE getFormValues() METHOD. $formResults = $this->getFormValues(); $db = $this->_getParam('db'); $data = array( 'user' => $formResults['username'], 'email' => $formResults['email'], 'password' => $formResults['password'], 'passwordc' => $formResults['passwordc'], 'name' => $formResults['name'], 'avatar' => $formResults['avatar'], ); $db->insert('Usuario',$data); } } And here's my registration view: <body> <h1>Thanks for signing up!</h1> <?php $this->form->setAction($this->url(array('controller' => 'registration','action'=>'saveforminformation'))); $this->form->setMethod('post'); echo $this->form; ?> <img alt="signupimg" src="/img/signup.png"> </body> I'm fairly new to Zend, but I'm eager to learn. How can I get the values sent in the form?

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• jQuery ajax delete script not actually deleting.

  - by werm

  I have a little personal webapp that I'm working on. I have a link that, when clicked, is supposed to make an ajax call to a php that is supposed to delete that info from a database. For some unknown reason, it won't actually delete the row from the database. I've tried everything I know, but still nothing. I'm sure it's something incredibly easy... Here are the scripts involved. Database output: $sql = "SELECT * FROM bookmark_app"; foreach ($dbh->query($sql) as $row) { echo '<div class="box" id="',$row['id'],'"><img src="images/avatar.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" class="avatar"/> <div class="text"><a href="',$row['url'],'">',$row['title'],'</a><br/> </div> /*** Click to delete ***/ <a href="?delete=',$row['id'],'" class="delete">x</a></div> <div class="clear"></div>'; } $dbh = null; Ajax script: $(document).ready(function() { $("a.delete").click(function(){ var element = $(this); var noteid = element.attr("id"); var info = 'id=' + noteid; $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: "includes/delete.php", data: info, success: function(){ element.parent().eq(0).fadeOut("slow"); } }); return false; }); }); Delete code: include('connect.php'); //delete.php?id=IdOfPost if($_GET['id']){ $id = $_GET['id']; //Delete the record of the post $delete = mysql_query("DELETE FROM `db` WHERE `id` = '$id'"); //Redirect the user header("Location:xxxx.php"); }

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• Forum achievements on a phpBB3 board?

  - by VIVA LA NWO

  I recently started a new community. The forum software is phpBB3, and so far so good. In an attempt to make my community more unique and interesting, I had to idea of having user achievements. Let me give you a quick run-down. Each user has achievements that they can earn (these will probably be across all users), for example an achievement for when a user hits 1,000 posts, when they upload an avatar, when one of their topics gets 1,000 views and so on. Each achievement has points, for example an achievement like uploading an avatar will be 10 points and reaching 10,000 points will grant 50 achievement points. If anyone here plays World of Warcraft you may be seeing where I'm getting the ideas from. :) What I'm struggling to get my head around though is how exactly to code this... I could keep a record of all users activity and add it to a special database table possibly, and then check via cron every minute or so if any user has met achievement criteria... but then I also want it controllable through the ACP so I can easily add new achievements and change their points etc. My mind is pretty blank when it comes to anything but the most simple things. What I really posted here for was feedback on the idea and how you all think I should go about doing this. The coding part should be pretty simple for me once I get my head around how phpBBB MODs need to be written. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your replies. :)

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• Problems with my JS array undefined x 7

  - by Dave

  I have an array im trying to loop through to create a new type of array specific to my current page. My array looks like this: //$_SESSION['data'] = Array ( [0] => 1 [1] => 0 [2] => Tom [8] => 1 [4] => 1 [5] => Array ( [7] => Array ( [0] => Andrew [1] => 1 [2] => 1 [4] => 0 [5] => avatar.jpg [6] => 1 ) ) [6] => Array ( [0] => 1 [1] => 2 ) ) So in my JS file i have this: var stats = <? echo $_SESSION['data'][5]); ?> ; //this is the array my_data = new Array(); for(var key in stats){ if(key in my_data){} else { //prevent double entry my_data[key] = new Array(); my_data[key][0] = stats[key][6]; my_data[key][1] = stats[key][5]; my_data[key][2] = stats[key][2]; my_data[key][3] = stats[key][0]; } } console.log(my_data); Now in console.log i get this : [undefined × 7, Array[4] 0: "1" 1: "avatar.jpg" 2: "1" 3: "Andrew" length: 4 __proto__: Array[0] ] I'm wondering why it is saying undefined x7?

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• What's a good way to integrate FB and Twitter into my commenting system (PHP)

  - by Jason

  Hi Guys, There are so many options out there for integration. At the moment I have comments that are posted on my articles, where a user types in their name and the comment. This is then sent to a moderation queue and displayed when approved. I want to acheive this: Comment with facebook login (ie facebook account listed as the name w/ avatar) Comment with twitter login (ie twitter account name listed as the name w/ avatar) Push comment from my website to twitter and to facebook I could go down a few paths as far as I know: Integrate with XFBML, which I don't like because I find it annoying to setup and messy. Integrate facebook comments system, although this can't push to twitter, or allow me to moderate comments from my backend (as far as I can tell i'd have to login under the facebook login for the dev account to moderate the comment) Find a php class that does open auth and integrate with both face book and twitter at once find a pre-created php class Anyone have a solution that will bias: a. easy to integrate b. lightweight c. is free Thanks for your suggestions in advance.

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• What’s Your Tax Strategy? Automate the Tax Transfer Pricing Process!

  - by tobyehatch

  Does your business operate in multiple countries? Well, whether you like it or not, many local and international tax authorities inspect your tax strategy.  Legal, effective tax planning is perceived as a “moral” issue. CEOs are being asked to testify on their process of tax transfer pricing between multinational legal entities.  Marc Seewald, Senior Director of Product Management for EPM Applications specializing in all tax subjects and Product Manager for Oracle Hyperion Tax Provisioning, and Bart Stoehr, Senior Director of Product Strategy for Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management joined me for a discussion/podcast on this interesting subject.  So what exactly is “tax transfer pricing”? Marc defined it this way. “Tax transfer pricing is a profit allocation methodology required to be used by multinational corporations. Specifically, the ultimate goal of the transfer pricing is to ensure that the global multinational pays their fair share of income tax in each of their local markets. Specifically, it prevents companies from unfairly moving profit from ‘high tax’ countries to ‘low tax’ countries.” According to Marc, in today’s global economy, profitability can be significantly impacted by goods and services exchanged between the related divisions within a single multinational company.  To ensure that these cost allocations are done fairly, there are rules that govern the process. These rules ensure that intercompany allocations fairly represent the actual nature of the businesses activity- as if two divisions were unrelated - and provide a clear audit trail of how the costs have been allocated to prove that allocations fall within reasonable ranges.  What are the repercussions of improper tax transfer pricing? How important is it? Tax transfer pricing allocations can materially impact the amount of overall corporate income taxes paid by a company worldwide, in some cases by hundreds of millions of dollars!  Since so much tax revenue is at stake, revenue agencies like the IRS, and international regulatory bodies like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are pushing to reform and clarify reporting for tax transfer pricing. Most recently the OECD announced an “Action Plan for Base Erosion and Profit Shifting”. As Marc explained, the times are changing and companies need to be responsive to this issue. “It feels like every other week there is another company being accused of avoiding taxes,” said Marc. Most recently, Caterpillar was accused of avoiding billions of dollars in taxes. In the last couple of years, Apple, GE, Ikea, and Starbucks, have all been accused of tax avoidance. It’s imperative that companies like these have a clear and auditable tax transfer process that enables them to justify tax transfer pricing allocations and avoid steep penalties and bad publicity. Transparency and efficiency are what is needed when it comes to the tax transfer pricing process. Bart explained that tax transfer pricing is driving a deeper inspection of profit recognition specifically focused on the tax element of profit.  However, allocations needed to support tax profitability are nearly identical in process to allocations taking place in other parts of the finance organization. For example, the methods and processes necessary to arrive at tax profitability by legal entity are no different than those used to arrive at fully loaded profitability for a product line. In fact, there is a great opportunity for alignment across these two different functions.So it seems that tax transfer pricing should be reflected in profitability in general. Bart agreed and told us more about some of the critical sub-processes of an overall tax transfer pricing process within the Oracle solution for tax transfer pricing.  “First, there is a ton of data preparation, enrichment and pre-allocation data analysis that is managed in the Oracle Hyperion solution. This serves as the “data staging” to the next, critical sub-processes.  From here, we leverage the Oracle EPM platform’s ability to re-use dimensions and legal entity driver data and financial data with Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM).  Within HPCM, we manage the driver data, define the legal entity to legal entity allocation rules (like cost plus), and have the option to test out multiple, simultaneous tax transfer pricing what-if scenarios.  Once processed, a tax expert can evaluate the effectiveness of any one scenario result versus another via a variance analysis configured with HPCM’s pre-packaged reporting capability known as Oracle Hyperion SmartView for Office.”   Further, Bart explained that the ability to visibly demonstrate how a cost or revenue has been allocated is really helpful and auditable.  “HPCM’s Traceability Maps are that visual representation of all allocation flows that have been executed and is the tax transfer analyst’s best friend in maintaining clear documentation for tax transfer pricing audits. Simply click and drill as you inspect the chain of allocation definitions and results. Once final, the post-allocated tax data can be compared to the GL to create invoices and journal entries for posting to your GL system of choice.  Of course, there is a framework for overall governance of the journal entries, allocation percentages, and reporting to include necessary approvals.” Lastly, Marc explained that the key value in using the Oracle Hyperion solution for tax transfer pricing is that it keeps everything in alignment in one single place. Specifically, Oracle Hyperion effectively becomes the single book of record for the GAAP, management, and the tax set of books. There are many benefits to having one source of the truth. These include EFFICIENCY, CONTROLS and TRANSPARENCY.So, what’s your tax strategy? Why not automate the tax transfer pricing process!To listen to the entire podcast, click here.To learn more about Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM), click here.

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: Importance of Relational Database in Big Data World – Day 9 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is HDFS. In this article we will take a quick look at the importance of the Relational Database in Big Data world. A Big Question? Here are a few questions I often received since the beginning of the Big Data Series - Does the relational database have no space in the story of the Big Data? Does relational database is no longer relevant as Big Data is evolving? Is relational database not capable to handle Big Data? Is it true that one no longer has to learn about relational data if Big Data is the final destination? Well, every single time when I hear that one person wants to learn about Big Data and is no longer interested in learning about relational database, I find it as a bit far stretched. I am not here to give ambiguous answers of It Depends. I am personally very clear that one who is aspiring to become Big Data Scientist or Big Data Expert they should learn about relational database. NoSQL Movement The reason for the NoSQL Movement in recent time was because of the two important advantages of the NoSQL databases. Performance Flexible Schema In personal experience I have found that when I use NoSQL I have found both of the above listed advantages when I use NoSQL database. There are instances when I found relational database too much restrictive when my data is unstructured as well as they have in the datatype which my Relational Database does not support. It is the same case when I have found that NoSQL solution performing much better than relational databases. I must say that I am a big fan of NoSQL solutions in the recent times but I have also seen occasions and situations where relational database is still perfect fit even though the database is growing increasingly as well have all the symptoms of the big data. Situations in Relational Database Outperforms Adhoc reporting is the one of the most common scenarios where NoSQL is does not have optimal solution. For example reporting queries often needs to aggregate based on the columns which are not indexed as well are built while the report is running, in this kind of scenario NoSQL databases (document database stores, distributed key value stores) database often does not perform well. In the case of the ad-hoc reporting I have often found it is much easier to work with relational databases. SQL is the most popular computer language of all the time. I have been using it for almost over 10 years and I feel that I will be using it for a long time in future. There are plenty of the tools, connectors and awareness of the SQL language in the industry. Pretty much every programming language has a written drivers for the SQL language and most of the developers have learned this language during their school/college time. In many cases, writing query based on SQL is much easier than writing queries in NoSQL supported languages. I believe this is the current situation but in the future this situation can reverse when No SQL query languages are equally popular. ACID (Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability) – Not all the NoSQL solutions offers ACID compliant language. There are always situations (for example banking transactions, eCommerce shopping carts etc.) where if there is no ACID the operations can be invalid as well database integrity can be at risk. Even though the data volume indeed qualify as a Big Data there are always operations in the application which absolutely needs ACID compliance matured language. The Mixed Bag I have often heard argument that all the big social media sites now a days have moved away from Relational Database. Actually this is not entirely true. While researching about Big Data and Relational Database, I have found that many of the popular social media sites uses Big Data solutions along with Relational Database. Many are using relational databases to deliver the results to end user on the run time and many still uses a relational database as their major backbone. Here are a few examples: Facebook uses MySQL to display the timeline. (Reference Link) Twitter uses MySQL. (Reference Link) Tumblr uses Sharded MySQL (Reference Link) Wikipedia uses MySQL for data storage. (Reference Link) There are many for prominent organizations which are running large scale applications uses relational database along with various Big Data frameworks to satisfy their various business needs. Summary I believe that RDBMS is like a vanilla ice cream. Everybody loves it and everybody has it. NoSQL and other solutions are like chocolate ice cream or custom ice cream – there is a huge base which loves them and wants them but not every ice cream maker can make it just right  for everyone’s taste. No matter how fancy an ice cream store is there is always plain vanilla ice cream available there. Just like the same, there are always cases and situations in the Big Data’s story where traditional relational database is the part of the whole story. In the real world scenarios there will be always the case when there will be need of the relational database concepts and its ideology. It is extremely important to accept relational database as one of the key components of the Big Data instead of treating it as a substandard technology. Ray of Hope – NewSQL In this module we discussed that there are places where we need ACID compliance from our Big Data application and NoSQL will not support that out of box. There is a new termed coined for the application/tool which supports most of the properties of the traditional RDBMS and supports Big Data infrastructure – NewSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about NewSQL. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Oracle Business Intelligence Advanced - Hands-on Workshop para Parceiros - 18 a 21 de Janeiro

  - by Claudia Costa

  Workshop Description This FREE hands-on workshop highlights strengths of OBIEE 11g by providing attendees a hands-on experience with BI 11g product. OBIEE 11g has adopted the standardized infrastructure of Fusion Middleware to provide robust server capability along with highly anticipated advanced visualization components like Maps, Flash based charts, Scorecards and KPIs. This workshop focuses on new features and infrastructure components for the BI practitioners who are familiar with either OBIEE 10g or previous BI releases. After taking this course, Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Advanced, you will gain insight into OBIEE11g technology, reporting solutions and new features. Workshop provides opportunities to practice with OBIEE11g environment as hands on activities. Participant will gain in-depth understanding of new architecture of OBIEE 11g, security mode, installation/configuration as well as reporting aspects like, new ROLAP/MOLAP style hierarchical browsing, new chart types, Action Framework and Advanced Visualization. If you are a Business Intelligence practitioners and familiar with BI10g - you cannot afford to miss this 3-day workshop. Register Now! PresentationsBusiness Intelligence EE (OBIEE) 11g: Advanced Workshop ·         OBIEE 11g Overview ·         OBIEE 11g Architecture and Infrastructure ·         OBIEE 11g Installation, Configuration and Monitoring ·         OBIEE11g Security Model and BI Components ·         OBIEE 11g Homepage Overview ·         New Visualizations: Master-Detail Events, Charts, Hierarchies ·         Reports Building with OBIEE 11g and Catalog Management ·         Spatial Integration, Action Framework, Scorecards ·         OBIEE 11g Dashboards ·         OBIEE Integration Options  Lab OutlineOracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE) 11g: Advanced Workshop The labs enable OBIEE Core functionality through hands-on activities are based on a Oracle VirtualBox image with software and training samples pre-installed. This Advanced course has few labs optional during the workshop to allow for students to practice them on their own. The primary purpose of the workshop is to provide expertise of 11g features and infrastructure changes from 10g. Labs will allow you to explore concepts to: ·         Have a clear understanding of the OBIEE 11g architecture ·         Have a clear understanding of the OBIEE differentiators ·         OBIEE11g Security Model ·         OBIEE11g Environment Management ·         Report Building with OBIEE11g ·         OBIEE11g Dashboard and Homepage Environment ·         New Visualization features ·         Management of Reports, Dashboards and BI Catalog Objects Audience ·         Business Intelligence Evangelist ·         Business Intelligence Application Developer or Consultant ·         Data Warehouse Developer ·         Enterprise Architects ·         Industry Solutions Architects Prerequisites ·         Experience and Understanding of OBIEE 10g is required. ·         Good understanding of data modeling for reporting purpose ·         Strong experience with database technologies preferred Equipment RequirementsThis workshop requires attendees to provide their own laptops. Attendee laptops must meet the following minimum hardware/software requirements: OBIEE 11g environments requires at least 3 GB of RAM (4GB Preferred), without which student will not be able to complete labs. This workshop has environment that includes VM Image and also a software components that students will install on their laptop for the labs. ·         Minimum 3GB RAM. 25GB free disk space ·         Internet Explorer 7 ·         VirtualBox (the latest version) ·         Downloadable from http://www.virtualbox.org ·         WINRAR or 7zip ·         Downloadable from http://www.win-rar.com/download.html ·         Downloadable from http://www.7zip.com/ Attendees will be given a VirtualBox image for Oraclee BI 11g Workshop containing the software along with required toolset, database and data sets for the labs. AgendaThis class duration is 3 Days9:00am: Sign-in and Technical Set up9:30am : Workshop Starts5:00pm : Workhop Ends LocalHotel Holiday Inn Express - Porto Salvo - Lisboa This class is Free. Register early to confirm a seat! Oracle BI Advanced 11g Hands-on Workshop - Schedule Register Now! January 11-13, 2011: Kista, Sweden January 18-20, 2011: Lisbon, Portugal March 1-3, 2011: Reading, Berkshire, UK March 15-17, 2011: Colombes, Paris, France March 29-31, 2011: Amsterdam, Netherlands Questions? For registration questions please send an email to [email protected]. Para outras informações, por favor contacte Claudia Costa, telf: 214235027 ou pelo email   

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Enterprise LOBs

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Enterprises are more and more dependent on their specialized internal Line of Business (LOB) applications than ever before. Naturally, the more software they leverage on-premises, the more infrastructure they need manage. It’s frequently the case that our customers simply can’t scale up their hardware purchases and operational staff as fast as internal demand for software requires. The result is that getting new or enhanced applications in the hands of business users becomes slower and more expensive every day. Being able to quickly deliver applications in a rapidly changing business environment while maintaining high standards of corporate security is a challenge that can be met right now by moving enterprise LOBs out into the cloud and leveraging Azure’s Access Control services. In fact, we’re seeing many of our customers (both large and small) see huge benefits from moving their web based business applications such as corporate help desks, expense tracking, travel portals, timesheets, and more to Windows Azure. Drivers Cost Reduction Time to market Security Solution Here’s a sketch of how many Windows Azure Enterprise LOBs are being architected and deployed: Ingredients Web Role – this will host the core of the application. Each web role is a virtual machine hosting an application written in ASP.NET (or optionally php, or node.js). The number of web roles can be scaled up or down as needed to handle peak and non-peak traffic loads. Many Java based applications are also being deployed to Windows Azure with a little more effort. Database – every modern web application needs to store data. SQL Azure databases look and act exactly like their on-premise siblings but are fault tolerant and have data redundancy built in. Access Control – this service is necessary to establish federated identity between the cloud hosted application and an enterprise’s corporate network. It works in conjunction with a secure token service (STS) that is hosted on-premises to establish the corporate user’s identity and credentials. The source code for an on-premises STS is provided in the Windows Azure training kit and merely needs to be customized for the corporate environment and published on a publicly accessible corporate web site. Once set up, corporate users see a near seamless single sign-on experience. Reporting – businesses live and die by their reports and SQL Azure Reporting, based on SQL Server Reporting 2008 R2, can serve up reports with tables, charts, maps, gauges, and more. These reports can be accessed from the Windows Azure Portal, through a web browser, or directly from applications. Service Bus (optional) – if deep integration with other applications and systems is needed, the service bus is the answer. It enables secure service layer communication between applications hosted behind firewalls in on-premises or partner datacenters and applications hosted inside Windows Azure. The Service Bus provides the ability to securely expose just the information and services that are necessary to create a simpler, more secure architecture than opening up a full blown VPN. Data Sync (optional) – in cases where the data stored in the cloud needs to be shared internally, establishing a secure one-way or two-way data-sync connection between the on-premises and off-premises databases is a perfect option. It can be very granular, allowing us to specify exactly what tables and columns to synchronize, setup filters to sync only a subset of rows, set the conflict resolution policy for two-way sync, and specify how frequently data should be synchronized Training Labs These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario Conventional Structures Columnstore ? SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically.  The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes.  As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics.  Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible.  The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators.  As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

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• Books are Dead! Long Live the Books!

  - by smisner

  We live in interesting times with regard to the availability of technical material. We have lots of free written material online in the form of vendor documentation online, forums, blogs, and Twitter. And we have written material that we can buy in the form of books, magazines, and training materials. Online videos and training – some free and some not free – are also an option. All of these formats are useful for one need or another. As an author, I pay particular attention to the demand for books, and for now I see no reason to stop authoring books. I assure you that I don’t get rich from the effort, and fortunately that is not my motivation. As someone who likes to refer to books frequently, I am still a big believer in books and have evidence from book sales that there are others like me. If I can do my part to help others learn about the technologies I work with, I will continue to produce content in a variety of formats, including books. (You can view a list of all of my books on the Publications page of my site and my online training videos at Pluralsight.) As a consumer of technical information, I prefer books because a book typically can get into a topic much more deeply than a blog post, and can provide more context than vendor documentation. It comes with a table of contents and a (hopefully accurate) index that helps me zero in on a topic of interest, and of course I can use the Search feature in digital form. Some people suggest that technology books are outdated as soon as they get published. I guess it depends on where you are with technology. Not everyone is able to upgrade to the latest and greatest version at release. I do assume, however, that the SQL Server 7.0 titles in my library have little value for me now, but I’m certain that the minute I discard the book, I’m going to want it for some reason! Meanwhile, as electronic books overtake physical books in sales, my husband is grateful that I can continue to build my collection digitally rather than physically as the books have a way of taking over significant square footage in our house! Blog posts, on the other hand, are useful for describing the scenarios that come up in real-life implementations that wouldn’t fit neatly into a book. As many years that I have working with the Microsoft BI stack, I still run into new problems that require creative thinking. Likewise, people who work with BI and other technologies that I use share what they learn through their blogs. Internet search engines help us find information in blogs that simply isn’t available anywhere else. Another great thing about blogs, also, is the connection to community and the dialog that can ensue between people with common interests. With the trend towards electronic formats for books, I imagine that we’ll see books continue to adapt to incorporate different forms of media and better ways to keep the information current. At the moment, I wish I had a better way to help readers with my last two Reporting Services books. In the case of the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step book, I have heard many cases of readers having problems with the sample database that shipped on CD – either the database was missing or it was corrupt. So I’ve provided a copy of the database on my site for download from http://datainspirations.com/uploads/rs2005sbsDW.zip. Then for the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 Reporting Services Step by Step book, we decided to avoid the database problem by using the AdventureWorks2008 samples that Microsoft published on Codeplex (although code samples are still available on CD). We had this silly idea that the URL for the download would remain constant, but it seems that expectation was ill-founded. Currently, the sample database is found at http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/37109 but I have no idea how long that will remain valid. My latest books (#9 and #10 which are milestones I never anticipated), Building Integrated Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 (McGraw Hill, 2011) and Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft Press, 2011), will not ship with a CD, but will provide all code samples for download at a site maintained by the respective publishers. I expect that the URLs for the downloads for the book will remain valid, but there are lots of references to other sites that can change or disappear over time. Does that mean authors shouldn’t make reference to such sites? Personally, I think the benefits to be gained from including links are greater than the risks of the links becoming invalid at some point. Do you think the time for technology books has come to an end? Is the delivery of books in electronic format enough to keep them alive? If technological barriers were no object, what would make a book more valuable to you than other formats through which you can obtain information?

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